Review: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) · 11:59pm Jun 23rd, 2015
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold…”
And with those lines, so begins Terry Gilliam’s nightmarish and incomprehensible (and ultimately meaningless) orgy of hallucinatory, nightmare inducing imagery and meandering monologuing haze of a film that refuses to follow any semblance of normalcy or logic, instead existing in its own disturbing two hour drug induced haze of paranoia and madness.
I suppose, in many ways, I’m far too straight laced of a man to appreciate whatever charm might be extracted from this experience, which for me was more disturbing and unsettling then enjoyable. This perpetual sense of swirling unease and oozing decay of logic and sanity, coupled with gross, vulgar and stomach churning imagery must be how one feels while bathing their minds in the toxic ocean of uppers, downers and hallucinogens, and any enjoyment must only come when one is throughly encumbered by a perception warped by those chemicals, because otherwise, it seems the only thing a sober person can get out of it is an intense sense of confusion and unease.
The acting by Depp and del Toro is insane and over the top, but not bad. They become their characters, even if said characters are a duo of drug addled maniacs with no sense of reality beyond the filter of toxins that cling to their brains. And most of the laughs (at least the ones that aren’t of that uncomfortable stiltedness that one uses to express fear and confusion) come from their performances. Depp’s narration, an increasingly aberrant and incoherent swath of stream of consciousness, serves to further show exactly why the drug culture of the sixties was ultimately just a futile and selfish exercise. Any ‘insight’ (and I use that term very, VERY loosely) that Raoul Duke might have on the nature of the American Dream, is immediately undermined by his own tangents and trip-outs, leaving me feeling increasingly confused.
I suppose, if one were sufficiently intoxicated, or partaking in the same drugs that the duo partakes in, one could find this to be quite a fun ride, but for me, it was just a disturbing, aimless wanderings down the manic and unfocused mind of a fool who thinks himself wise, ultimately saying nothing about either America or the drug culture, other then serving as the perfect example of why drugs just end up ruining your entire life.
I’m not even sure if I can rate it, since, on a technical level (and as an adaptation of an equally incomprehensible book by an equally incomprehensible man), its a rather…inventive? film with great cinematography, but as a normal film, its just too weird, too aberrant, too deviant to really appeal to me beyond the morbid fascination one gets from seeing something totally self destruct in front of them, all while being unable to look away.
So yeah, it defies categorizing, and if you enjoy its incomprehensible orgy of nightmare imagery and ultimate meaninglessness, then more power to you.
But as for me, I bought the ticket and took the ride, but its one I never wish to experience again.
Kinda sounds like Waiting for Godot. But less coherent.
Reading about the film kind of wants me to find the original book by Hunter S. Thompson, who by all accounts was the drug addled maniac that shows up in the movie
You just had to have either a naturally-occurring or deliberately-induced chemical imbalance in the brain for it to click. I saw this movie in my young adulthood and it terrified and mesmerized me in strange ways. It's good that it didn't click with you.
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